Revival House (8 page)

“I kind of have a lot of stuff to do. Project for school, applying for internships and jobs...”

Please, please just let me, like, get off the phone.

“Okay,” he says, “maybe some other time, then?”

“Yeah, sure. ‘Bye.” I hang up without waiting for his response.

I pull a stack of papers out of my giant wet purse. I spent, like, the whole afternoon in the Career Services office looking through huge binders of job and internship descriptions and application instructions. I took copious notes, and here they all sit, on the floor, soggy around the edges and wrinkled from being jammed in my bag. The information is overwhelming. I mean, there are a lot of fucking jobs out there. However, I only have about four possibilities and one is an unpaid internship. Yeah, how is that gonna work? I’d have to find a night job as, like, a waitress or hooker or something. Ick.

The job I’m hoping to get is with Tim Burton’s production company. They’re in pre-production on some kind of, like, totally bizarre animated biopic, which I would give my left tit to work on. So, I have to get to work on my resume. My grades kind of, like, suck, so I’ll have to fill in all my ghost tour shit, build that up.

Fucking Exley. I feel bad for him, though. Kind of.

I hope I don’t get stuck in this putrid town like he is, having to save that stupid Exley & Sons Funeral Home. Ugh, can you imagine that shit? I’d go crazy if I had to work in a place like that. Ghost tours are creepy, but they’re fake. In a funeral parlor, that shit’s for real.

Chapter 9 – Caleb

A searing iron brands my temple from the inside.

Again.

I lie in bed with the shades pulled, trying not to move, coming to terms with the fact that this headache could very well be my own fault. I did have quite a lot to drink, thinking about Scarlet graduating and leaving. She knows that I love her. That fucking bitch. I had to do something with the rage that had been bubbling up from my guts for days, weeks. I thought I had it under control, but apparently, I don’t.

That tugboat captain was a lot bigger after he’d stood up from his barstool. I could have sworn he wasn’t even real before he stood up and punched me in the shoulder. Which, of course, led to me kicking him in the chest. Which ultimately led to him smashing me in the side of the head with his pitcher of beer.

Then the police showed up. They let some EMTs sew up my face.

And they took me to the drunk tank.

“Why do you do this, Caleb?” Officer Grayson Randall is my chauffer this evening.

I’ve known Gray since our elementary days at Blessed Sacrament. When we were at BC, he never once gave me a swirly or punched me in the locker room or anything. He is tired of picking me up from bar fights, I think, reading his mind. I’d be a little worried about police brutality in my future, but Gray isn’t that type. He’d always been a Goody-Two-Shoes.

“You’re gonna get yourself killed one of these times.”

I don’t say anything. I breathe on the squad car’s window and watch the law offices and townhouses slide past. I would attempt to defend myself by explaining that I thought the gentleman at the bar was a stuffed bear, but I don’t want to go through the drug testing again.

“Hey, you remember that time you flipped over that table at Jazz Fest?” He laughs.

I remember but I don’t laugh.

Hydrogen, helium...

Of course I remember. It was three summers ago. Throngs of people had wedged themselves onto every inch of green space in front of Forsyth Park’s new band shell. As Savannah is highly civilized, the locals do not bring blankets or those tacky lawn chairs and listen to the music while they eat fast food and guzzle beer from cans. Oh, no, that would be tantamount to walking into Elizabeth’s on 37
^th
, a fine dining establishment, in an outfit borrowed from Four. The SCAD students can get away with that sort of behavior, of course, and one must watch for flying discs at the less crowded far end of the park, but those of us who are from here know better. You can tell at a glance who is from here and who is not. Jazz Fest is just one of our polarizing events. Native Savannahians do Jazz Fest as such: long folding tables draped with freshly-pressed damask tablecloths, set with fine bone china and crystal, folded cloth napkins, candelabras, champagne on ice, crystal decanters filled with expensive port, chafing dishes filled with shrimp and grits to be eaten with gleaming silver. You get the idea.

In any case, I had wandered over to the park to listen to some music, appropriately attired, of course, in my usual suit and tie. I tried to remain on the fringe of the crowd, but I couldn’t hear the music over the laughing of some drunken students near me, so I waded a bit deeper into the fray. I happened to stop and stand in front of someone’s formal table and was admonished by a young gentleman wearing a bow tie. I turned to face him. He very cordially told me to fuck off— not in those words, but that’s what he meant.

Then I saw it.

Some kind of scaly beast slithered underneath their table, rustling their ornate tablecloth. My mouth dropped open and I grabbed one of their weighty butter knives. The people at the table looked at me and then at each other like they were witnessing an accident.

They would be in about four seconds.

I dived under the table, smashing my forehead and flipping the elaborate table onto the laps of two ladies in very formal dress. One of the ladies’ dresses caught fire after a lit candle rocketed into her lap, and her husband rolled her in the grass, looking at me with his mouth set in a grim line.

I could not find the scaly beast.

It scrabbled away as soon as it saw me grab the knife.

Anyway, Officer Randall had so kindly escorted me to lock-up on that fine festive evening as well. Apparently, that is an event that sticks out in his tiny policeman’s mind.

I swear there was something under that table.

~

“What the fuck, dude,” Four says as we walk out of the police station. Again. “My parents are starting to ask questions about what I need all this money for every month, man. I can only say ‘drugs’ so many times, you know, before they start having me tested or send me to rehab or something.”

“Thanks for bailing me out,” I say.

Nothing seems real. I am an actor in a movie, a character in a book. My life means nothing. Or it’s an allegorical representation of how not to live life. I don’t know.

All I know is that Scarlet is trying to get away.

That’s what really set me off last night. Why doesn’t she want to stay here? I’ll get the business on track. She can dress up the parlor viewing rooms and do make-up. We can have a couple of kids to pass the business down to when we’re old and want to retire to St. Simons or Hilton Head, whichever she prefers.

She’d probably end up leaving me, anyway. Maybe having sex with Four on that mahogany table in the Telfair.

It’s becoming more of a control issue for me, trying to make her stay. Something in me doesn’t want to let her go. Something in me says
do whatever you have to to make her stay
. I couldn’t keep my parents from leaving me, but I can at least try to keep Scarlet here. I know it’s wrong to squash her dreams. Isn’t it?

I love her— the smoky B.O. smell of her, the tough exterior, the curves of her sizeable body. But I hate her for flirting with Four, for ignoring me, for wanting to leave.

Love and Hate.

It’s like I’m two different people.

Chapter 10 – Four

Oh, my God, I think I ate a fucking muppet.

I roll out of bed, hoping the blanket of my hangover will stay bungled up with the sheets. No such luck, fuck. I wade through stacks of comic books and DVD cases, CDs and paperbacks, walking on top of a sea of crap to get to the bathroom. I take a leak and look at my sorry-ass mug in the mirror. My eyes don’t have whites— they have reds. I wasn’t exactly sober when I bailed Dude out last night. I was with this chick at The Velvet Elvis. Dude fucked up my whole night, man. But I more than made up for it when I went back to the bar.

I have no idea how I got home.

I stick out my fuzzy tongue and almost gag. At least there’s no visible sign of any muppet carnage. My hair sticks up in random spikes, but that’s kind of normal. I have a pick-ax lodged in my forehead— oh, it’s there all right even if you can’t see it.

Pounding.

In my head or on the door? I choose the door. I shamble the ten or so steps to the front door, stepping on my Boba Fett bobble head (still in its original packaging). “Shit.” I peek through the blinds covering the window, the sunlight burning my retinas.

Christ.

Why?

“Hey, man, what’s up?” I open the door, sagging to the side so he can squeeze through the doorway and into my hovel of a carriage house. He picks his way over to the couch. “Sorry, the maid hasn’t been in yet today.” That isn’t really a joke— my mom cleans the place for me. I am still her baby, and this is still part of her house.

He wears the weirdest expression. Like Dude’s going to be sick. He looks how I feel.

“So, what’s up?” I say. “You swallow a palmetto bug or something on the way over?” I fall onto my messed up bed. “What’s with the long face?” That’s a joke. He never gets that one, but he does have a long face.

“I’m going to get Scarlet to stay,” Caleb says.

I sit up.

I stare at his goofy-looking Lurch-like face. “Get the fuck out of here, dude. She’s already gone. La-La Land is the best place for that fucking headcase.” I’m curious, though. “How do you think you’re going to pull that off, anyway?” My eyes hurt. I need Gatorade, but I don’t have any.

“Guess.”

“Um...” Huh, I am stumped. I know he’s totally head-over-heels for Scarlet, but there is no way that fat she-devil will ever take pity on old Caleb. “You’re going to propose?” I laugh so hard I snort. What a tool.

Caleb shoots me a wicked grimace. But I see the gleam in his large purple-ringed eye sockets. That dude’s always beat up, man. I think he gets into a lot more shit than I even know about. I think he wears make-up at work, so he doesn’t scare anybody.

“Hey, I hadn’t thought of that,” he says, a grin widening his cracked Grinchy lips. Ha, Grinchy. That’s who Exley looks like, a cross between Lurch and the Grinch. I’d never really put that together before. Excellent. He’d be an awesome comic book character.

“Okay, suppose she had some kind of mental lapse and said yes. Then what?” I say, never dreaming it could happen. I just can’t imagine tall, emaciated, conservative stick-boy Exley married to short, stubby, rocked-out, fat-ass Scarlet.

“Well, I was thinking more of offering her a job. At the parlor. She could live upstairs, so she wouldn’t have to pay rent or anything. The proposal could come after she settles in.”

The look of happiness on his face creeps me the fuck out. I’ve never seen that before, never in the... how many years have I known the guy? Eleven? Twelve? I fall over and stare up at the beamed ceiling. The rails of wood waver in the strobing shadows cast by the ceiling fan.

Wow, trip the fuck out, man. The Grurch and the fucked-out art-hag. Never saw that one coming. You know, I think just maybe— and I’d fucking die if either of them ever found out— that she kind of digs me. She’d never shack up with Caleb, even if her only alternative was to go live on a park bench somewhere in Hollywood. He’s fucking dreaming. She’d come to me first. Not that I’d do her even with yours, but I’m just saying, I’ve seen her looking at me.

I need some air.

~

By the time we walk over to River Street, I’m ready to stick a fucking shotgun in my mouth. I’m sick to death of hearing about his big plans to hire Fatty. My headache has cleared up enough for me to have actual coherent thoughts, so I try to change the subject.

“Okay, job, great, whatever.” Fuck this. “Hey, tell me what Sterling said about Fillmore, that dude we dropped on his head, man.” I grab an ‘Extreme Ghost Tours’ flyer from Caleb and staple it to a utility pole. Might as well do some work while I’m dragging my sorry ass around town.

“He was a bit upset by the incident,” he says, staring out at the river.

A bit upset. I’m sure that’s an understatement. I look for lumps and bruises on my friend’s head, but I don’t see any— other than the black eye and a few stitches from last night. Yeah, I know Caleb’s old son-of-a-bitch uncle smacks him upside the head with that cane every now and then. Not that he would ever say anything against the man who’d raised and cared for him after his parents died. But, I know. I saw him through the window once. Nasty old fuck.

“He said it’s a bad idea to mess with the dead. People don’t want innovation in our industry, especially not in this part of the country,” he says. He looks up at the sky and then at me. “You know I disagree.” The right side of his mouth curls up in an evil smirk.